Table of Contents for "CGI in Fashion: Online Shopping & Design Redefined":
- Digital Twins and Augmented Reality: The Future of Online Fashion Retail?
- Cost Efficiency Through CGI: How Digitalization Is Revolutionizing the Fashion Retail Industry
- Technological advances make CGI indispensable
- CGI Fashion Influencer
- Are there any limits to CGI at all?
- How Balenciaga Uses CGI
- A Look into the Future: Digital Fast Fashion, Games, Movies, and Social Media Marketing
- FAQ
CGI in Fashion and Design—what possibilities does it offer? In fact, CGI opens up creative possibilities that were unthinkable just a few years ago. That’s because fashion is now sold primarily online. According to Statista, 41 percent of respondents in German-speaking countries purchase clothing primarily or exclusively online, and this trend is on the rise.
So, in the fashion and design industries, an online store is a must. And that's where CGI comes in: Compared to conventional product photography, photorealistic renderings give you the opportunity to impress your customers with a truly special service.
3D Fashion Visualization
Digital Twins and Augmented Reality: The Future of Online Fashion Retail?
Although you have the option of showing products from different sides, in different versions and on different models with product photography, the Digital Twin of your products can do even more:
- Your customers can see the garment on the model and rotate the model - an all-round view is no problem at all.
- "Shop the Look"? Let your customers mix and match items from your collection. Avatars can be dressed however you like to see how different pieces look together.
- Different color? No problem at all. Just one click in the online store is all it takes to change the color—or the size. How does the blouse or hoodie look with dark hair and a darker complexion? Click—different model, same garment.
Since most visits to online stores today come from smartphones, you can assume that your customers have a camera at their disposal. Think AR—Mister Specs has been using it for quite some time now: Why not simply offer your customers the chance to try on fashion items using their smartphones?
The camera built into every smartphone brings your customer onto the screen; with a single click in the online store, you can overlay sweaters, jeans, sneakers, blouses, or handbags onto their clothes.
This is possible because a digital version of your collection exists. Every single garment is rendered in photorealistic detail. Meticulously crafted 3D visualizations show every single seam in sharp detail. Your customers can almost feel the texture of the products.
CGI Fashion Image
Cost Efficiency Through CGI: How Digitalization Is Revolutionizing the Fashion Retail Industry
CGI is cost-effective compared to conventional product photography. You don't need a location or a set—neither in-house nor rented off-site.
You don't have to pay for models or photographers, and you're not tied to scheduling appointments. Lighting, weather conditions, and other natural factors can't throw a wrench in your plans. The entire logistics process is streamlined. Plus, CGI is more predictable.
The fashion and design industries have now caught up with what the automotive industry has known for a long time: When products are created digitally from start to finish—that is, from conception and planning through development to marketing—it saves both time and money. The entire process becomes more predictable, which has a positive impact on efficiency.
Technological advances make CGI indispensable
In fact, the use of CGI has steadily increased in recent years compared to conventional product photography. While the realistic rendering of fabrics—particularly surface designs— using CGI, with consistent lighting and texture, posed challenges just a few years ago, this is no longer an issue. The technical advances are impressive—and so are the 3D visualizations in fashion and design.
You can see just how far this has come by looking at the IKEA catalog. While IKEA is known for interiors, furniture, and home furnishings rather than fashion and design, textiles still play an important role there as well. In 2012, CGI accounted for 25 percent of the (online) catalog. By 2017, according to IKEA, that figure had already risen to 78 percent.
3D Fashion Rendering
CGI Fashion Influencer
In the fashion industry, digitalization has not only revolutionized retail and design, but has also significantly transformed influencer marketing. Through the use of CGI (computer-generated imagery), digital personas are now being created that can serve as fashion influencers.
These CGI influencers are computer-generated characters who, much like their human counterparts, wear fashion, set trends, and have large followings on social media. They are available 24/7, regardless of real-world conditions, and can be tailored to specific target audiences.
The difference between a traditional fashion influencer and a CGI influencer lies in their very nature. While a traditional influencer is a real person, a CGI influencer is a virtual construct created by graphic designers and marketing specialists.
Despite their artificial nature, these digital influencers have the potential to set real fashion trends and promote brands in innovative ways. They fit perfectly into a world where online identities and experiences are becoming increasingly relevant, and can be seen as the next stage in the evolution of influencer marketing.
Not only can they integrate seamlessly into social media, but they also open the door to entirely new business models. For example, fashion could be created for virtual worlds, video games, or special online events. This opens up a wide range of possibilities for future business models and marketing strategies in the fashion industry.
Are there any limits to CGI at all?
Almost everyone has known Mave since the release of their first single, “Pandora’s Box,” in late January 2023. The four girls in the K-pop band—Siu, Zena, Tyra, and Marty—look exactly how you’d imagine K-pop girls to look: perfect figures, breathtaking hair, always impressively styled. And don’t even get me started on their outfits! Vinyl and leather, shiny metal—everything form-fitting yet incredibly plastic. Every piece is tailored to fit the girls perfectly.
Siu, Zena, Tyra, and Marty don’t exist—at least not as real, biologically human beings. The band is computer-generated. From their perfect pouty lips to their incredibly shiny hair to their provocative fashion, everything is CGI. Mave is computer-generated design. Metaverse Entertainment, the company behind Mave, has never made a secret of this. Why does this work in the K-pop scene?
It works because our viewing habits have changed. On social media, we’re constantly encountering images that look somewhat “artificial.” Filters make what isn’t perfect appear perfect. What matters isn’t that it looks “real,” but that the reality—which isn’t always perfect—remains hidden. Can you really tell whether there’s a “real” person or “real” fashion behind the filter, or whether the carefully edited surface is masking a grid?
How Balenciaga Uses CGI
For Balenciaga’s spring collection, designer Demna Gvasalia created the entire collection on a computer. Product development using CGI—it certainly works in fashion and design. The actual garments—a total of 44 looks—were presented on the runway by a single model.
Is that actually possible? Yes and no. 3D fashion visualization makes possible what is actually impossible. Of course, various models walked the runway for the collection. But beforehand, model Eliza Douglas’s face had been digitized using a 3D scan and recreated as a replica.
The Digital Twin of the model (the face) was projected onto the individual looks that walked across the catwalk in reality. Virtual and real elements merge. Basically, that's "just" a form of AR application.
A Look into the Future: Digital Fast Fashion, Games, Movies, and Social Media Marketing
Why should you stop at the currently possible applications? Start dreaming, get creative! Once your collections exist as a Digital Twin, there's so much more possible. Avatars, i.e. people created via CGI, in games, films, and various AR/VR applications want to be dressed. Is your target group active on social media? Maybe you've heard of Lil Miquela.
Miquela Sousa, known as Lil Miquela, has more than a million followers on Instagram and has already been hacked by a troll associated with the far right. She wears Prada at Milan Fashion Week, and she certainly doesn't hold back when it comes to fashion in general.
But neither Lil Miquela nor the troll Bermuda actually exist as real people. Both are virtual influencers. Brud, the startup behind Lil Miquela, has created a life for the computer-generated influencer that could actually happen.
Lil goes out in New York, meets real-life celebrities, learns to skate, and drinks matcha lattes. And her followers ask her for beauty tips. Here, too, it’s not immediately clear whether she’s a “real” influencer who heavily edits her photos. Lil Miquela has a boyfriend, who is also a virtual influencer, also created by Brud.
Do you use social media for your marketing? CGI pushes the boundaries of what’s possible. In addition to your own virtual influencers wearing your fashion collections, you could even create collections that exist exclusively in the virtual world.
Did Prada pay Brud for Lil Miquela to wear Prada in Milan? Neither company is revealing that. Perhaps a whole new business segment is emerging in the fashion industry.
3D Photo Set: Fashion by Danthree Studio
